Sounds in Space

What new forms of art and performance are possible if we use Augmented Reality (AR) technology to create invisible spheres of sound? Sandpit collaborated with Google Creative Lab for three unique artistic experiments with location-based audio technology.

The Sounds in Space app by Google Creative Lab creates an invisible audio layer over the real world. This means that sounds are inaudible until the user – holding their device and wearing headphones – walks into the specific physical space where the sound is triggered by their device’s location.

Sounds in Space was made in collaboration with – and for – artists, musicians, curators and choreographers of all kinds. Sandpit collaborated with a range of multidisciplinary artists and organisations, including State Library Victoria (SLV) and the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Google Creative Lab and Sandpit brought together four independent artists – Mayu Muto, Thomas E Kelly, Glen Walton and Zoe Coombs-Marr – to explore how they might use this technology in their own unique artform practices.

With State Library Victoria, we experimented with a new kind of dynamic audio experience. Visitors could wander through SLV’s gallery with their headphones and devices, listening to a curatorial narrative that responded to where they travelled and how long they engaged with specific items in the SLV collection.

Invisible Orchestra was a thrilling sound installation in which audiences navigated their way through an abstract space inspired by the solar system. With their vision partly obscured, audiences experienced the attracting and repelling forces of space through original soundscapes composed by Richard Tognetti and Joseph Nizeti.